Today the European Union has the most environmentally friendly arsenal of rules in the world and has done more to tackle pressing ecological problems, such as climate change, than any other major power.
But it has not always been like this. Caring for the environment did not feature in the Treaty of Rome, the document that gave birth to the modern day EU. Yet environmental problems were never far away. Europe’s love affair with the car was moving into top gear, industry was busy belching out pollutants and raw sewage was being pumped into our rivers and seas.

As Europe grows wealthier it creates more and more rubbish. Every man, woman and child in the EU generates over a kilo of waste every day. Multiply that figure by nearly half a billion EU citizens and it quickly becomes clear that managing our waste without harming the environment is a major headache.

Waste is increasingly moving across EU borders, for recovery or disposal. This is true for waste shipments between EU countries, and also transfers of waste outside the EU, according to a new assessment from the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Signals is published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) at the start of each year and provides snapshot stories on issues of interest both to the environmental policy debate and the wider public for the upcoming year. The eight stories addressed are not exhaustive but have been selected on the basis of their relevance to the current environmental policy debate in Europe. They address priority issues of climate change, nature and biodiversity, the use of natural resources and health.

Dealing with large quantities of unwanted (and sometimes toxic) waste is often difficult – but it becomes even more complicated when people live in isolated communities, in extreme environments hundreds of kilometres from the nearest treatment plant. This is the subject of a new film considering waste management in Greenland, entitled ‘Mission Greenland – for a cleaner future’.